Sanddancer's Second 75 in 2010

Having reached 75 before the midway point, I thought I'd start a new thread. My first thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/80899

Initially my target was 120 books to improve on last year, but now I'm thinking that reading another 75 would be good, so I'm aiming for 150 across the year.

Welcome to the multi-thread club, Sandy!

I hope you make your new goal.

76. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is my new comfortable read, although the subject here (attempted suicide) may not be an obvious choice for a comfort read. Its New Year's Eve and four very different people go to the top of building which has become a famous spot for suicides. Expecting to be alone, their plans to jump fail when they find each other there and they decide not to jump that night. The story is told from the four perspectives which are Martin, a disgraced Breakfast television presenter, Maureen, a middle-aged woman with a severely disabled son, Jess, an annoying teenager and JJ, an American wannabe rock star, who delivers pizzas for a living. Apart from Maureen, none of the characters are particularly likeable, but I still enjoyed hearing their stories. The plot is perhaps far-fetched, but it doesn't go down the road of them all learning from each other, becoming best friends etc. The parts written from Maureen's viewpoint about her son, i thought were brilliant and again nearly made me cry - I think given Hornby's son's autism, that these parts were written with the most genuine feelings. There were also some bits that made me laugh too.

77. Seeds of Time by John Wyndham
A collection of sci-fi short stories, mainly about time travel and Mars. Like Wyndham's novels, I enjoyed this collection because they are thoughtful and concentrate on the human implications of science, rather than action and adventure. Chronoclasm and Opposite Number are both almost romances, but involving time travel and the usual questions asked about altering history and diverging lifelines. Pawley's Peepholes is about people from the future visiting our time to gawp at us, which was an entertaining conceit. Some of the others were darker in tone. Meteor reads rather like a B movie plot but with a bit of a twist. Survival is an absolutely chilling (if a little predictable) story about a journey to Mars. I've read some reviewers that criticise this for seeming dated, but that didn't bother me at all and I enjoyed pretty much all of the stories which is rare for me.

#3: Adding both of those to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendations.

I can imagine that Hornby could be a comfort read, no matter the subject. He's real-life, talk-out-the-side-of-your-mouth funny.

78. The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
This is a lovely book. It is set in a village in Wales in the 1950s and the main character is an imaginative girl called Gwenni, who thinks she can fly and hears the earth humming. The husband of one of her neighbours disappears and Gwenni plays detective and uncovers some family secrets. Depression/mental illness and the effects of war cast a shadow over the book, but in the company of such a delightful character as Gwenni, the book is beautiful and thoughtful, rather than outrightly bleak. There are also some great touches of magical realism (particularly some Toby Jugs that come to life) that added to the atmosphere of the book. Loved it.

I found this secondhand for 50p in the local Marie Curie charity shop the other day - that's only 16p more than I've paid in library fines for it so far.

I think it worth the fines!

79. Three Scottish Poets Norman MacCaig, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lockhead
I fell in love with Edwin Morgan's poem "When You Go" when I heard it on the BBC's Culture Show a few years ago and I've been meaning to read more of his work since. My library had this anthology which sandwiches Morgan between two other Scottish poets. My knowledge of contemporary poetry is pretty much nil, so I didn't know anything by either of the other two, but I enjoyed the collection. MacCraig's work is the most obviously Scottish with many of his poems being set in the Highlands. I particularly liked the sly wit of the poems Aunt Julia, My Last Word Frogs and Still Life. I was already familiar with some of Edwin Morgan's poems, but none quite matched "When You Go", but completely different I enjoyed The Mummy and Construction for I K Brunel. The last set by Liz Lockhead appealed to me the least being a bit long for my tastes, but The Other Woman has stuck in my mind. Although the three poets were very different, each of them had a poem about missing someone that I liked, "No Choice", "Absense" and "The Empty Song"

80. Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
I struggled a bit with this book as war stories aren't my usual thing (it was a gift). It is set in the First World War and is about Irish soldiers and the difficult situation of them fighting for the English King when in Ireland, many people wanted home rule. The main character, Willie, is a naive son of a policeman, who has only joined the war because he wasn't tall enough to join the police, The war gives him a new perspective, which leads to conflict with his father. I was much more interested in the parts about his father, his sisters and sweetheart, than the bulk of the novel set in the trenches. If you are particularly interested in this period or Irish history, then I think this would be a good book, but it didn't grab me so much.

81. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
I thought I knew what this book was about but there were several things about it that I wasn't expecting. Firstly, I wasn't expecting the love between two women element of the story (was this in the film version?). Secondly, I thought that racism would play a bigger part in the plot, but most of the suffering caused to Celie is done by other African-Americans. Finally, despite some of the horrific things that happen in the book, it wasn't actually that depressing and was quite uplifting in parts. I was less keen on the letters from Netti in Africa than Celie's letters to God and her sister.

82. Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick
I wasn't sure whether I liked the look of this or not when it was featured on the TV Book Club earlier this year, but I saw in a charity shop. It is about a man who has suffered a breakdown when he splits up with his wife. He moves back in with his parents and is trying to think positively and hopes to be reunited with his wife. A couple of chapters in, I thought I might find the narrator irritating, but he grew on me and I ended up really enjoying this. The ending is perhaps a little bit predictable, but I didn't mind so much. My lack of understanding of American Football also didn't matter.

I still need to read The Color Purple!

Yes, the relationship between Celie and Shug was in the film.

Alcottacre - I thought I was the only person who hadn't read it.

Elkiedee - I wasn't entirely sure if I'd seen the film or not Clearly I haven't.

Nope, I have not managed to get to it yet, so now I am the only person who has not read it!

83. Legend of a Suicide by David Vann
This seems to happen to me regularly - I put a book on my ReadItSwapIt Wishlist and when I get a copy of it, I have absolutely no recollection of why I was interested in it or how I heard about it. The book has a very bleak subject matter - the suicide of the narrator's father (why did I think I wanted to read this??). The book has an interesting structure and has been described as short stories, but they are all connected, even if it doesn't follow a linear narrative. It comprises of 6 chapters, the first three are written in the first person by Roy, the teenager whose father kills himself and cover what Roy can remember about his father, his parent's marriage, his stepmother and his mother's relationships after the father dies. Then Chapter 4 (the longest part of the book) switches to be in the third person, but is about the same people. In this part, Roy and his father are living in the wilds of Alaska, trying to survive the winter. Mid-way through this, the story takes an unexpected turn, which I thought was quite clever. Then the final two chapters revert back to the first person stories, from Roy's point of view as an adult. Apparently, there are similarities with the author's real life and this book can be seen as him working through his feelings about this father's death, but with a literary spin on it. It was certainly an interesting approach to the subject, but I'm not entirely convinced that it was wholly successful.

#15: I think I will skip that one. It does not sound like my cuppa.

84. Please don't come back from the moon by Dean Bakopoulos
An impulse loan from the library and it was a good choice - I loved this. It is about a working class neighbourhood near Detroit where all of the fathers disappear, leaving notes to say that they have gone to the moon. The book is narrated by Michael, who is 16 when his father leaves . Much of the book is just him going about his life, work, education and relationships and in the background are references to changes in President and this idea that men may have gone to live in the moon. This was Dean Bakopoulos's debut novel but I don't think he has published anything else since, but I will definitely look out for more by him.

This sounds really good - was it from a UK publisher? Sometimes my libraries get odd copies of American books which weren't published here, but it's not predictable, I usually only see them when I've already bought them.

#17: Too bad that one is not available at my local library. It looks good! Into the BlackHole it goes for now.

No, it was published here by Black Swan. It isn't actually that new - my library copy is from 2006.

I've ordered a secondhand copy via Amazon.

85. So He Takes the Dog by Jonathan Buckley
Another great impulse selection from the library. The body of a homeless man is found on the beach in winter by a dog. The man was Henry, who was a known figure locally although nobody really knew that much about him. The book is about the police, in particularly a detective called John, trying to piece together bits of Henry's life in order to discover who killed him. But, this is not a conventional crime novel as the author is not interested in neatly resolved narratives, so what we are presented with instead is glimpses into the lives of Henry, the police and everyone who crosses their path - everyone who even enters the story briefly is a fully formed, real character with a back story. The recommendation on the front cover is from Jon McGregor whose first two books I've enjoyed and Jonathan Buckley's style of writing here is very similar to McGregor's. Everything is very subtle - the title being the perfect example of this - the one line about a man's decision to take his dog with him a walk, is the catalyst for what follows, but it is so subtle. The author (in the interview at the back of the book) says that nothing in the book shouts. I really liked this style of writing, but like with Jon MacGregor's books, I think it is something that can divide opinion hugely.

#22: I will have to give that one a try. Thanks for the recommendation, Sandy!

86. Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersen
In a remote place in Norway, an old man meets someone who he once knew in his childhood and this awakens memories of a summer in the past. This was picked by someone on The Book Show recently as their favourite book of the last decade and I thought it sounded great (I can't now remember whose recommendation it was), and although it seemed like the sort of book I would like and I could see that it was beautifully written, it somehow just failed to fully capture my interest. It may have just been that I wasn't in the right mood for it, but ultimately I was disappointed by it.

87. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I was impressed by Purple Hibiscus and The Thing Around Your Neck but for some reason I didn't feel compelled to rush to read this one. Which was a mistake, because it turned out that I actually preferred this. It defintely struck me as a more mature piece than Purple Hibiscus - more ambitious in its subject matter and less overly-emotional - despite the horrors portrayed here, I never felt that it was exploitative or going for cheap tugs at the heartstrings. I wasn't sure about the white British character, Richard Churchill and at times I felt he was rather a stereotype, although he reminded me of characters from Graham Greene novels, which are often full of those bumbling well-meaning Brits abroad. The Biafran War was not something I knew anything much about - I would use the excuse of not being alive at the time, but that really isn't a proper reason as there are plenty of other things that happened in that period that I know about. Although given Britain's shameful part in this, it is hardly any wonder that we weren't taught about it at school. On another note, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has gone to the top of my list of people I'm jealous of - not only is she intelligent and talented, she is also stunningly beautiful judging by the photo in the front of this book.

#24: One of my friends here on LT said regarding Out Stealing Horses that she was not Scandinavian enough to enjoy it. Perhaps that is a problem with that particular book?

I was disappointed in Half of a Yellow Sun, although I still liked it. I felt like it got to be too much of a soap opera. I am glad that you enjoyed it more than I did!

I’ll be looking for Seeds of Time, The Earth Hums in B Flat, and So He Takes the Dog. Thanks, sanddancer.

You are clipping along at a very fast pace. Congratulations!

Alcottacre - I suppose Out Stealing Horses was rather Scandinavian in style but I've read other books that the same thing could be said about such as Astrid and Veronika and The Summer Book and really loved those.

Jadebird - I defintely think The Earth Hums in B Flat is something most people would enjoy.

88. Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield
A memoir mainly about the author's love for his wife, who dies suddenly at 31. They were completely different character-wise, but shared a love of music and making mix tapes was a big part of their time together. Since his wife dies, it is obviously a sad story, particularly his denial of her death and his grief, but the way he remembers her is so wonderful. Each chapter starts with a particular mix tape that he made to coincide with that period of his life. I attempted to put together a playlist based on these songs to listen to as I read the book. I liked this book a lot, but then I was always going to love soething abotu a couple who were brought together by a shared love of Big Star and had Thirteen as their wedding song.

#28: Ah well, maybe it is just Pettersen's style then that is the problem.

I also liked Astrid and Veronika..a book I read last month.

Love is a Mix Tape looks interesting and I put this on my tbr pile back in February of 2010 when Nancywhite recommended it.

89 Monster 1959 by David Maine
The other books I've read by David Maine have taken well-known Bible stories as their starting point. This book takes its inspiration from the King Kong story, mixed with 1950s B-Movies about monsters. K is the monster (a massive weird amalgamation of other creatures) who lives on an island where the locals make regular sacrifices to him. Then along come a group of Americans and instead of sacrificing one of their own people, the locals sacrifice a blonde American woman instead. The monster is then captured and taken to the USA where he is put in a circus. The book is structured as if it was a movie, but the story is fleshed out so that we see the motivation of characters, the details you wouldn't see in a film, but interestingly it goes in the other opposite direction from the films it parodies regarding the monster as it doesn't try to humanise him and assign human thoughts to him. Whilst the setting of the book is the 1950s, there are also references to political events from around the world from various periods. Some reviews I've read found Maine's political comments too much, but to me it seemed entirely appropriate as 1950s films were so entrenched in idelogy and particularly the monster movies which were usually very thinly disguised references to communism.

#32: That one sounds interesting. Thanks for the recommendation!

90 Gold by Dan Rhodes
I read Timoleon Vieta Come Home a few years ago which I really enjoyed, but for some reason I didn't seek out anything more by Dan Rhodes until now. Like Timoleon Vieta Come Home, this book has a quirky sense of humour that certainly won't be to everyone's taste, but it really tickled me. Miyuki Woodward, who is half Welsh and half Japanese, goes on holiday to the same Welsh village every year in the winter season, where she reads, goes on walks and drinking in the local pubs. In the pub, she encounters the same locals she meets every year: Tall Mr Hughes, Short Mr Hughes, Mr Puw, Septic Barry and the Children from Previous Relationships. Life there moves at a gentle pace but then Miyaki does something that upsets the balance of things, which threatens to ruin the holiday. The book is full of wonderful characters with interesting quirks and whilst not exactly side-splitting, it made me laugh several times. It was an absolute pleasure to read, although it did have a darker side to it than it might at first seem. I think I'll probably read it again soon which is something I rarely do.

#34: I have never read anything by Dan Rhodes. I will have to look and see if my local library has that one!

He's a British writer (he might be Scottish). I was reminded of him by an article from the Telegraph which was their response to the New Yorker's 20 best writers under 40, where they gave their British choices.

Unfortunately, my local library does not have any of his books.

A few more to add

91. Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr
What say about this book? Its not pleasant at all, but it is still brilliant. I enjoyed the equally bleak but brilliant film version a few years ago and have eventually managed to read the book. The book follows four characters in New York: Sara, a lonely Jewish widow, her son Harry, a drug addict turned dealer, his girlfriend Marion, a rich girl with problems and his black friend Tyrone. Harry has big plans, but to make money he gets involved in drug dealing and before too long, with the horrible inevitability that these drug tales always have, he is using more than he is selling. His mother is an addict in her way, addicted to daytime television and when she is offered the chance to go on television, her obsession leds her into further problems. The book is written in a steam of consciousness style with minimal amounts of punctation - hardly any commas, no quotation marks and / instead of apostrophes as it was faster for the author to type. For the first few pages, which were also heavy on the 1970s street slang, I didn't think I'd ( or I/d as the author would type) be able to read it, but once I got into the flow, I was caught up in the character's lives.

92. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The founding father of the African novel in English, this book is held in very high esteem, but unfortunately it left me unimpressed. I can see why at the time of its publication, it would have been greeted as something completely different as presumably there was very little literature from Africa published in the English-speaking world and tales of the rituals and customs of Nigerian tribes would have been a fascinating novelty. But I've read other books set in Africa so this book had no novelty factor for me and I found the writing dull and the characters two-dimensional. It threatened to become more interesting when the white man arrived (what an awful colonialist thing to write!), but it never lived up to its reputation for me.

93. Brown Morning by Franck Pavloff
More of a pamplet than a book, I'm not even sure it is long enough to be considered a novella, but it is published on its own, so I'm counting it here despite its brevity. It is a parable written in response to the growing support in France in the 1990s for extreme right-wing groups. In this fictional society, the Brown party rule and have introduced a law banning the ownership of cats who aren't brown. Then the law expands to include dogs that aren't brown. I won't say any more because at only 20 pages long, there won't be much else to read if I do. It is short and simple, but a very powerful tale and my copy had great graphics of brown cats and dogs.

I haven't read Things Fall Apart yet, but enjoyed reading a collection of his essays The Education of a British-Protected Child and a collection of stories, Girls at War.

His essays do sound quite interesting, so I might read them at some point in the future, but so far, not too impressed with his fiction.

94. The Little White Car by Danuta de Rhodes
Danuta de Rhodes is an assumed name of the writer Dan Rhodes (see book 90). He has adopted this persona of a French first-time novelist who also works in fashion and written a book that starts off as if it is chick lit or at least a pastiche of it. I don't know what his motivation for writing under this thinly disguised name - whether it was to show how easy writing chick lit is, to show that people respond differently to books depending on the details given about the author? I'm not sure. At first, I thought that if it was just going to be some cynical experiment to prove a point about publishing (I know he did say he wasn't going to write any more books at one point) that it would become tedious quickly, but actually the book had Dan Rhodes characteristic charm - characters that are both ordinary and quirky and a rather dark sense of humour. The plot of the book is that a French girl splits up with her bohemian boyfriend and drives home through Paris rather worse for wear. In the morning, she find her car is battered and news of Princess Diana's death is on the radio, which leads her to assume that she was responsible for the Princess' death. The rest of the book how she attempts to get rid of the evidence. I really enjoyed this and Dan Rhodes is well on his way to becoming one of my favourite writers.

95. The Flea Palace by Elif Safak
The book centres on a building in Istanbul. We are given the history of the building, before it moves onto the main part of the novel in modern times, where the building is now divided into 10 apartments. People dump their rubbish into the building's garden and there is awful smell inside the building which annoys its residents. We are introduced to the apartments' inhabitants, one apartment at a time, with each chapter being set in one apartment, but as the book progresses, their stories and lives intertwine so they appear in each others apartments. The residents are a colourful bunch, reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of Istanbul. Inevitably with this kind of structure, I found some characters more interesting than others. I particularly liked Cemal and Celal, a pair of twin hairdressers who had been separated as children and recently reunited - I thought their story could have made a good book on its own. Whilst I enjoyed some parts of the book, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would (I loved her book The Bastard of Istanbul) - perhaps there were too many characters in it and I wasn't sure about the segments that topped and tailed the book.

Closing in on 100! Great job.

Hi. I liked your review of The Flea Palace. This is an author new to me, but I think on the basis of your review I'll try and find one of her books. Thanks.

>42 sanddancer:: Of the two, The Bastard of Istanbul looks the more interesting, so I'll give that a try.

Ditto what Stasia said!

96. The House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier
Richard's life is in a rut - he is between jobs and his marriage to an American woman with two sons from a previous marriage is in trouble. His old college friend, a scientist, offers him his old family home in Cornwall for the summer on the condition that Richard takes part in his science experiment. It involves drinking a chemical which has the affect of "transporting" him back to the 1300s. Unlike in other time travel stories, he isn't fully present in this past world, but sees things through a guide, Roger, a servant to one of the local noble familes. He becomes enchanted with a woman from this time period and concerned about the various plots and goings on in this time, and soon becomes obsessed with going back in time at the expense of his real life in the present. Like many other reviews I've read of this, I wasn't particularly interested in the plot in the 1300s, but more so in how Richard's behaviour in the present changes and how he behaves like a drug addict.

97. The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
A short novel about West Indian immigrants to London in the 1950s. Moses has been in the city for 10 years when lots more of his countrymen start to arrive, drawn by the promise of employment. He dispenses advice and watches as newer arrivals try to find there way in London. The way it is written mimics the way West Indian's would speak with some slang words in, but not so much that it makes it hard to understand. The book gives an interesting insight into how difficult things were for these first immigrants (who were British subjects) and the racism that they encountered when they had been invited here. It is also interesting for the depiction of London as a city which holds a fascination for people, who struggle to live in it, and yet find it difficult to leave (I'm one of them!).

#47: I already had The Lonely Londoners in the BlackHole due to Darryl's review. I really must get my hands on a copy.

#47 - The Lonely Londoners does sound good. I'm also an adopted Londoner, and although my experience will have been a million miles different from those West Indians' in most ways, I'll bet I find something in common somewhere in there.

98. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
I love lists so was immediately interested in the New Yorkers 20 under 40 list of best young authors, as well as the Telegraph's response to it with the best British writers of the same demographic. However, I had only read a few of the writers on the New Yorker list so I'm making an effort to track down more of them, starting with this short story collection.

I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but I really enjoyed this collection. Unlike many short story collections, there were no low points here me - they were all of the same high quality. The stories were all of a decent length so that there was room for real character development. Its hard to say what unites the collection or there are any overall themes, but they are generally about people in unhappy situations, although the characters vary enormously - burnt out businessman, teenage girl, young boy, son of an man with a form of dementia, carnival workers. The last story which gives the book its title is on the surface completely different from the others being about marauding Vikings rather than set in contemporary America, but the style and the feeling of loss is the same.

I know that for many people the short story is a great literary form in its own right, but reading these made me hope that the author does write a full length novel some time in the near future.

99. Monster Love by Carol Topolski
As well as the 20 under 40, I'm attempting to read more from the Orange Prize lists (both of which nicely coincide with this month's TIOLI challenge). The subject matter here was very challenging - it is about a couple with an obsessive relationship with each other, who neglect and abuse their daughter. The book is written from various perspectives, starting with a nosey neighbour who eventually reports her suspicions when she doesn't see the child for months, and progressing to include a colleague, family members and people involved in the legal process. There are also chilling chapters from the point of view of the couple. The book is very well written and compulsive reading, although I had to stop on occasions as it did make me very uncomfortable.

#51: I do not think I could read that one, no matter how good it is.

100 The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Lauren Liebenberg
Another book from a previous Orange Longlist. The book is set in Rhodesia during the Bush Wars following its independence from Britain, before it became Zimbabwe. I don't know that much about this period and thought it would make an interesting setting. The story is about two young girls and their family and again I usually enjoy these childhood perspectives on troubled times. However, something about this book failed to really capture my interest, depsite it having the ingredients I normally like. One factor may have been that the text is littered with Afrikaans words and slang with a glossary at the back, which rather interrupted the flow of reading. I normally quite like the use of other other languages or dialects, but here it wasn't always possible to assume their meaning so explanations in footnotes, rather than at the back, would have been better. The main plot is about how the family life is disrupted by the arrival of an evil boy cousin. The cousin character never seemed particularly real and this family melodrama never seemed to tie in with the bigger political picture of what was happening in the outside world so the two strands to the book never came together for me. Overall, it isn't a bad book and it has some memorable incidents and the grandfather is a fantastic character, but it just didn't work as well as a whole as I hoped it would.

101 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
Another one from the 20 under 40 list. Like Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, this is collection of short stories and again I was impressed and enjoyed the form, although it still left me hoping for a full length novel from the author. The central character in each story is an African-American and this identity often plays a large part in the story, but as a white English woman, I didn't feel excluded by this as the characters and their experiences were so well-written. There wasn't a bad story in this collection, but the ones that particularly stick in my mind are; Brownies about a clash between a troop of African-American brownies and a group of white brownies at summer camp, The Ant of the Self about a teenage boy who drives to Washington DC with his no good father to try to make money at the Million Man March and Doris is Coming set during the 1960s at the time of sit-ins and protests against segregation.

I'm reading Lauren Liebenberg now - have you put it in as a TIOLI book (and which category? - it could fit in 2 or 3 - Orange, culinary, and possibly first heard of it on LT (if you did). I think I might share your view of it; I liked The Boy Next Door better. For novels about growing up in Zimbabwe, I also recommend Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga - I think white African writers often find it easier to get an audience in Europe/other English speaking countries than their black counterparts, which is one reason that I'm pleased that a relatively commercial novel by a black Zimbabwean writer (albeit with an Italian surname) won the Orange new writers award.

I will have to look for Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - it sounds good - and the other 20 under 40 short story collection you mention. I thought the 20 Under 40 short story collection I've read tihs month, Karen Russell's St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was fantastic, and she has a novel coming out in February (US)/March (UK) next year.

Congrats on reading book# 100! These last couple of books are on my wish list, so was interested in what you had to say. Still want to read both of them. I like your idea of reading from the "20 under 40" list; I saw it, but didn't save it. I think I'll go back and look for it along with the other one you mentioned, since I really liked Gold too.

Congratulations on hitting 100!

Elkiedee - I have put both in the TIOLI challenge now. I went with the culinery category since that is where it was already listed.

Bonnie - the New Yorker's list is still on their website. The Telegraph's British 20 under 40 list is here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7835258/Are-these-Britains-best-20-nove...

That's good, at last count I think we were on over 80 TIOLI points (can we hit 100 before the end of 2010?)

I'm sure with all of the books you read for the challenge we will make it!

Thanks for the link! I loved even reading the introduction to this list--very interesting. I just finished Burnt Shadows and have several of the recommended authors/books in my tbr basket, and I know I want to read another Rhodes, so am looking forward to checking out the other suggestions.

102. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
I was daunted at first by how awful this book looked - small print that went right to the edge of the page, to cram as many words in as possible. But thankfully, the contents of the book itself were so enjoyable that I soon forgot that I didn't like the look of the book. It is a light-hearted time travel saga. Sometime not too far in the future, time travel has become possible and is used by historians for research. However, their work has been hijacked by a millionairess, Mrs Schrapnell who wants to rebuild Coventry Cathedral as it once was, but in Oxford. One item they have been unable to recreate is something called the Bishop's Bird Stump, so she has sent a team of historian looking around the past for it. However, meddling in the past soon interfers with the course of history and two of these historians, Ned and Verity find themselves in Victorian England where they must ensure that things follow a certain course for Mrs Schrapnel's ancestor, Tossie. What follows is a mixture of science fiction, comedy of manners, romance and detective story, with lots of literary references thrown in (Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, the novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayer, bits of Shakespare and the poetry of Tennyson). If I was to be very critical it was perhaps a bit long for what was essentially such a silly lightweight plot, but it was such a delight to read that I didn't mind. I particularly loved the portrayal of the dog, a bulldog called Cyril and a cat, Princess Arjumand (who actually plays a more significant role despite the book's title).

#62: If you have not read Willis' first book in her Time Traveling series, Doomsday Book, I would recommend that one to you as well.

I haven't read it but it seems rather hard to find over here. I can't get it from London's libraries at all. I will probably buy it online at some point, but I'm trying to restrict my book buying for a while as I've completely run out of storage space.

I can certainly relate to lack of storage space!

Gosh, visiting again and catching up on your reading is dangerous for me. I've already requested the 2 Dan Rhodes books from the library - Gold & The Little White Car. Also The Bastard of Istanbul, my library has the sequel to that one - The forty rules of love : a novel of Rumi.

Stasia - I still haven't read The Colour Purple but I have at least seen the movie.

Storage space and lack of - I think we can all relate to that.

Avatiakh - I didn't realise there was a sequel to The Bastard of Istanbul - I will definitely look out for that as I liked the characters in that book.

103, The Seymour Tapes by Tim Lott
I really liked Tim Lott's book about Thatcher's Britain Rumours of a Hurricane and was intrigued by the premise of this one. It purports to be about real-events and to be a work of non-fiction. It is about a scandal involving a respectable middle class doctor and something to do with tapes. The author introduces the novel talking about how he was approached to write the book by the wife of the doctor, with it written in a way as if these were real events and that the reader would already be familiar with details of the story. But obviously, since it is fiction, we only have the full story revealed to us as the book progresses - at first it is apparent that the doctor is dead and had been involved with a woman called Sherry, but we don't know exactly what happened. The book is contructed as a series of interviews with the wife, Samantha Seymour and a couple of other people involved in the story along with descriptions of video tape evidence left behind. It was a clever idea and worked well, but because the nature of the story is unsettling and there are absolutely no likeable characters whatsoever, I'm not sure I enjoyed reading it that much and I wasn't too keen on how it ended.

Also another minor point, but which really irked me was that the wife was described early in the book as being 39 years old but it didn't add up that she was that young. She has two teenage children (the oldest being 17 I think) and it was mentioned that she didn't give up her successful career in PR when she had them, and a degree in psychology and at another point she claims to have been married for 20-odd years. That would make her 22 when she had the first child - surely too young to have already had a successful career after finishing university plus then the 20+ years of marriage would have made her a teenage bride. Was this an intentional mistake to show the author's lack of awareness or easily-fooledness or just a mistake? Either way, it bugged me enough that I was aware of it and looking for other age-related clues in the text all the way through.

#68: I think I will pass on that one although the premise sounds intriguing.

#67> I think I got it wrong, it's a follow up not a sequel. I mis-read the brief description on my library catalog.

> 54

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is great. My favorite story in that collection was "Brownies". It's such a statement on how we tend to stereotype people. That was such a great idea for a short story, wasn't it? I, too, am disappointed that ZZ Packer has not yet come out with a novel.

Squeaky - Brownies was a great story. Very effective and although I do want a full length novel from her, this collection has restored my interest in short stories.

I found Drinking Coffee Elsewhere in the library. My library book piles are now ridiculous, totally, but hopefully I'll get to it at some point...

104. Northline by Willy Vlautin
I'd been saving this one as I've loved his other two novels and knew when I finished this, there was nothing more to read by Vlautin. Again, it was brilliant. This one is about a 22 year old girl, whose name is only given (I think) once in the whole book, but referred to as "the girl" throughout. She isn't a bad person, but like Vlautin's other main characters, often makes bad choice -when we first meet her, she already has a drink problem despite being young and is in an abusive relationship with a violent racist. But we see through her relationships with her mother and sister that she is essentially a kind person. She is infatuated with Paul Newman and in hard times, when the real world becomes too much, she imagines Paul Newman is talking to her, giving her advice. To get away from her boyfriend, she leaves Las Vegas and moves to Reno, where she tries to get her life together. Although her story is sad, there are small acts of kindness from people in the book that make it uplifting in places and the Paul Newman device is a sweet touch.

I bought this book in San Francisco and my edition came with a CD of acoustic music to accompany it which is great too. Until Vlautin writes another book, I'm making do with music by his group Richmond Fontaine and I'm gradually buying their back catalogue.

I am going to have to look for Willy Vlautin's books!

Yes, you must. I've enjoyed all three. I've just remembered that I have a short story by him in a collection by various authors, so I have something more by him yet to read.

105. Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
Reading this now brings me up to date with all of Klosterman's books. This one, like his one work of fiction, has received mixed reviews, but again I enjoyed it - to my mind mediocre Klosterman being better than a lot of other stuff. As usual with his books, not being a sports-obsessed North American male means that some of his references are lost on me, but it didn't really get in the way of enjoying this collection of essays - even the one entitled "Football" had some interesting things in it for the non-football interested such as myself. Other essays included a comparison between Kurt Cobain and David Koresh, why he loved Abba, irony and time-travel. The opening essay looks at why people agree to be interviewed and his own feelings about them now he is interviewed more than he is the interviewer and between chapters there are mock interview questions and answers. My favourite chapter was the one about time travel, probably because I've been reading so many time travel books recently that I had pondered these questions myself and it contained my favourite comparison in the book, where he says that thinking about time travel which is impossible is as futile as discussing whether leprechuans would suffer from high cholesterol.

106. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The final book in my 1010 challenge time travel category, this one is a young adult book, which I thought might provide a contrast with the other books I've read on this theme. Meg is a disruptive teenager, who worries about being different and not as brilliant as her scientist parents. Her father has disappeared and then she goes on a journey through time and space to bring him back. This is apparently a classic and I suppose it was an action packed little story that I would have enjoyed if I was younger, but compared to the books I've read on a similar topic, this didn't really give any food for thought about the implications of time travel - it was just part of an adventure.

#78: A Wrinkle in Time has been one of my favorites since I was a kid. I am sorry you did not enjoy it more.

I think it was mainly in contrast with the "grown up" time travel books. I can see why it would be popular with children or if you read it when young that you would still love it.

107. The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman
Like his cult novella All My Friends are Superheroes, the characters in this book are all people with very unusual traits, but which are treated as if they aren't anything out of the ordinary, living in a world which seems pretty much like our own, rather than a created fantasy universe. It is a very quirky, odd story but written about in a simple matter-of-fact way and is despite the weirdness is essentially a story about relationships. Rebecca has the quirk of whatever feelings she has, everyone around her can see them, so she attempts to hide them from the world which involves storing mementoes of her life. Her brother-in-law, Lewis is a pop star who meets a woman claiming to be God. Aby is (and this is where it gets very weird) an amphibian creature (one with gills and a greenish hue to the skin, but apparently looks like humans otherwise) who has come onto the land for the first time to find her mother, Margaret, who left the water for the land years ago and now runs a hotel with no guests. They have their own religion "aquatics" that teaches that they are the chosen ones, saved from the Great Flood but given the ability to live on land and in water as a test of their faith, with anyone who choses life on land being damned. The book has various messages about religion and memories, which might have come across as trite had they not been presented in this imaginative way. Very sweet and enjoyable.

#81: I already have that one in the BlackHole, but my local library does not have it yet. Hopefully the library will get it soon.

108 Blacklands by Belinda Bauer
Months after this was featured on the TV Book Club, I'm getting around to reading it (I have The Rapture on my pile too which was in their list too). I found this book very readable and I was immediately drawn into the story. It is about a 12 year boy whose uncle was murdered as a child by a serial killer, but his body never found. He wants the killer to tell him where his uncle is buried in the hope that it will help his grandmoter and improve their family life. I liked the character of Stephen and his relationships with his friend Lewis, his little brother and his mother's boyfriends, but I was less keen on the parts that were about the killer, not just because he was a vile person and the awful crimes he'd committed, but I found the latter parts of the plot involving him rather far-fetched. There was a note at the end of the book from the author about how the story had started as her contemplating the long-term effects of such a crime on a family and in a way I think I would have preferred it if the story had stayed on these lines and that the boy had continued just to write to the killer without the implausible meladramatic turn it takes. Having said that, I liked the way it was written and I would probably read more by Belinda Bauer in the future as this was just her first novel.

#83: I already have that one in the BlackHole. I best move it up!

109. An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray
This is the story of the Hythloday family, made rich by the father's work in the cosmetics industry, but after his death, finding that they aren't as well-off as they once thought. This is particularly a problem for our narrator, the 24 year son, Charles, who has dedicated his life to the art of graceful living i.e. not doing much at all other than drinking and watching old films. But a series of events led Charles to being forced to leave his beloved home, having to live and, for the first time in his life, work in modern day Dublin. There is a lot of "fish out of water" comedy as the Bertie Wooster-like Charles interacts with ordinary people. In the meantime, Bel has set up a community theatre, which creates the opportunity for a harsh but accurate send up of this particular branch of the performing arts. I found this book very funny and despite (or perhaps because of?) his snobbery, I found Charles a surprisingly endearing narrator. There are also some great minor characters in here too - particularly the postman turned private investigator, who deserves a book all to himself. There is also a great chapter featuring the poet Yeats, which is one of the funniest things I've read in some time. Highly recommended.

110. The Room of Lost Things by Stella Duffy
Having met Stella Duffy when she hosted a conference-type event recently, I then saw her perform in the excellent Life Game. So I thought I should probably read one of her books. This is about the residents of an area of south London near Loughborough Junction station, an area I'm fairly familiar with as I used to know someone who lived round there. The main part of the plot is about Robert, who owns the dry cleaners, but is going to sell up to Akeel, a young Muslim man. He teaches Akeel the business and that as a cleaner, he sees secret parts of his customers lives. Wooven around this story, we see the lives of some of his customers, including an Australian nanny, a mixed-race social worker, a gay dance instructor, a criminal.

When I first moved to London (about 14 years ago now), I loved reading books set here where the location and London's mix of people was an important part of the story, but now I'm ready to leave London, I'm less keen on that type of book, so I didn't think I would like this that much. But it managed to surprise me and was much more memorable than I was expecting. It becomes clear early in the book that Robert has a secret, but what it was took me completely by surprise. There were also a couple of other little twists that made me question by own assumptions. It also has a beautifully poignant ending.

I bought the Stella Duffy book a while ago, I have all her books except her latest one. I'm glad to know that it's such a good read. I moved to London about 15 years ago and want to move, but I still like reading books aobut the city.

#85/86: Looks like a couple of good reads. I will have to see if I can locate them.

I just came across your thread from a TIOLI/75 Challenge thread. You've read some great books and I just added several to my wishlist based on your reviews. Now you're starred so I don't lose you.

Thanks pdadeer. I have really enjoyed my reading this year.

111. Dead Clever by Scarlett Thomas
This was Scarlett Thomas' first book, which is a crime story and the first in her series featuring Lily Pascale. Lily is no ordinary detective - she is actually a literature lecturer, specialising in crime and horror. She has left London and her useless boyfriend behind, to return to the Devon of her childhood where coincidentially there is a vacancy for a literature expert at the university. However, the university is in uproar as a female student has just been murdered and in a particularly gruesome way. It turns out that the dead girl should have been in one of Lily's classes, which puts her right in the middle of the mystery, which involves drugs, a cult and heavy doses of genre references. It was enjoyable enough although I think having read some of her later books, that she has definitely improved as a writer since this one. I do get the impression that for all the "stuff" that surrounds her stories - often science - that she only tends to write about what she knows - that is being a writer/literature lecturer and that all of her lead characters are pretty much interchangeable.

Also the huge amount of smoking in this book irked me - at this point Thomas was obviously still thinking that smoking makes her "cool" so we get a lot of unnecessary detail about the heroine smoking. I know that she was trying to quit while writing her last book (another indication that perhaps each heroine is just her), where she replaced smoking with orange eating!

112. The Rapture by Liz Jensen
Another TV Book Show book that I've read belatedly. Set in the not too distant future, a world that looks pretty much like ours now except there are more religious fundamentalists (on all sides) and militant environmentalists, all predicting the end of the world. Gabrielle Fox is an art therapist, who has become paralysed in a car accident. Not considered ready to return to her old job, she takes a temporary position at facility for troubled teenagers. one inmae here is Bethany Krall, who murdered her own mother and now claims to be able to predict environmental disasters.

I was intrigued by the plot but found the first 100 pages very slow going. The protagonist newly confined to a wheelchair was an interesting idea, but Gabrielle Fox is one of the hardest to warm to characters I've encountered in a long time. She meets a physicist who she wants to help her understand Bethany's predictions, but how easily she meets Frazer Melville just the expert she needs at a social event seems ridiculous and their relationship was so irritating. They fall in love pretty much instantly, while mainly discussing global disasters and a psychotic teenager, but then Gabrielle becomes paranoid and jealous. I suppose we probably don't just stop thinking about our own dramas even when faced with crisis, but Gabrielle's unfounded obsessing about her jealous in the face of possibly the end of the world made her hard to care about and in turn made it hard to take the threat of the end of human life seriously as she was more concerned with whether someone else was prettier than her. Also it annoyed me that she always referred to his man she loved either by his full name or as "the physicist".

I really didn't like this book at all, but I still felt compelled to finish it. I found the latter part of the book seemed to be written ready to be made into a disaster film (not something I'd go to see) and left behind any promise of anything more interesting from the earlier part of the book.

I quite enjoyed The Rapture, although I agree that the protagonist was mostly unlikeable and the neding read as though it was written with a film adaptation in mind. I reviewed the book here.

Ian - I enjoyed your review. I think one the point you make about Bethany's abiity never being explained is what kept me reading - I wondered if a proper explanation would be given for it or if it will would all be explained away somehow.

I found The Rapture extremely disturbing when I read it last year... I wrote in my review how it affected me, and in the end I hated the book for it. I thought it was well written, but I never want anything to do with it again.

You both seemed to have had stronger reactions to it than I did. It certainly wasn't a likeable book, and I agree it was well written, but I don't recall actively disliking it.

113. Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
I like Jon McGregor's writing style, but it tends to polarise opinion. He writes in a very lyrical way, but about bleak subjects. His style has a deteached quality to it and it is often hard to "get into" his books quickly as it isn't immediately obvious who is who. The book begins with the discovery of a man's body in a flat. We find out that this is Robert and gradually we are given pieces of information about his life, what led to him being in this state and last days. The story is told in a fragmented style with multiple narrators, mainly the drug addicts that hang around Robert's flat. There are descriptions of people taking drugs and a graphic description of an autopsy, which were deeply unpleasant to read. It is a tragic story, with no redemption or lighter moments. I didn't enjoy this book - it really wasn't possible to enjoy it - but I still admire McGregor's writing and was moved by it.

Following this, I definitely think I need something more uplifting to read next.

#97: Following this, I definitely think I need something more uplifting to read next.

I can see why after reading your review!

114. Jerusalem by Patrick Neate
Touchstone doesn't seem to work for this book, but Patrick Neate is one of the Telegraph's British 20 best writers under 40. The book has various connected strands which connect England to the African nation Zambawa. In this fictional country, the President has just won his third election under dubious circumstance, is refusing to pay its international debts and has just imprisoned a British businessman on suspicion of being a terrorist. A hypocritical MP is dispatched to Africa to sort it out. At home, we see his son, an entrepreneur who markets "cool" discovers a new musician who has done a controversial version of the song Jerusalem. Mixed in with this, we have extracts from an anonymous gentleman's diary from the turn of the 19th century and myths and legends from Africa. It was enjoyable enough (especially welcome after the last book) and amongst the comedy and satire, there were some thought-provoking moments and one part that I found very moving. Patrick Neate has written several other books which I will look out for too.

#99: I have never heard of Patrick Neate, but my local library has one of his books, City of Tiny Lights. Have you read that one, Sandy?

No, I haven't read that one - Jersusalem was the first by him that I've read which I picked up in a charity shop. City of Tiny Lights sounds quite interesting - I'm always interested in unusual approaches to the detective story. It looks as if a lot of his books are concerned with Africa, race or nationality in some way.

#101: I think I will take City of Tiny Lights out of the library next time I am over there. It interests me as well.

115. Story of the Scene The inside scope on famous moments in film by Roger Clarke
There are often myths and rumours surrounding films, how they were made and what went on behind the scenes. This book attempts to find the truth behind some popular myths and reveal what how certain famous shots were achieved. About 80 films are looked here, with a two page spread given to each, which includes an image from the film. There are some interesting tit-bits of information in here, but it is restricted by the rigid format - some films are obviously more interesting than others and it would be good to have more detail, whilst others don't really have enough to fill the two pages.

116. Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon
Another book from a New Yorker 20 under 40 list author. In a country still devastated by a civil war, Norma is a radio show host whose show reunited people with family they have lost. Unknown to her devoted listeners, Norma has lost her husband, a man who was named as a terrorist after his disappearance. One day a young boy is left at the radio station with a list of people missing from his village and is put into Norma's care. The story moves backwards to forwards between the present and the past, weaving together the stories of Norma, her husband, the boy and the country. The book started very strongly, but it didn't quite live up to its early promise and whilst I admired the writing, I didn't love it in the way I thought I would.

#104: Too bad about that one. It sounded like an intriguing premise.

I hope your next read is more to your taste!

It was still good, but the difference between good and brilliant. I expected it would leave me weeping but I didn't feel that emotionally involved with it - perhaps it is the idea of a woman who doesn't know whether or not her husband is a terrorist.

117. Blockbuster - How the Jaws and Jedi Generation turned Hollywood into a Boom-Town by Tom Shone
I wanted to read a film-related book, but dithered over this one as I'm not generally a fan of the blockbuster genre. However, I absolutely loved this book and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in films regardless of what their specific tastes are. It is in part a counter-argument to Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls which blamed Spielberg and Lucas' success for dumbing down cinema, with the author here praising Jaws and Star Wars, and the films directed by the generation inspired by these films. He adopts a very even-handed approach to the ideas of box office figures, in terms of inflation and how ticket sales don't reflect whether an audience enjoyed the film. It is an interesting insight into how the film industry works, but still with some amusing tales about the big personalities behind the cameras - whilst Spielberg might not provide much by being surprisingly normal and fair, James Cameron makes up for it. Shone's love of film is obvious - he is in awe of great films, but not afraid to say when something is poor and he is equally dismissive of film snobs and at the other end of the scale, those who over-intellectualise popular culture.

#106: If the book did not emotionally involve you, then I understand why you considered it only 'good, not brilliant.'

#107: I will have to look for that one. Thanks for the recommendation!

>>104 sanddancer: - I was still intrigued by Lost City Radio, but it seems like you had the same opinion as a lot of the other reviews, so I guess I'll pass. Thanks for the review though

118. Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
The first book I've read for a book club I've just joined. Apparently it is a classic, but I hadn't heard of it before. I wasn't hugely impressed by it (again my expectations might have been too high) but I think I appreciate it more since the book club discussion. In case you are as ignorant as me, it is narrated by Francois, son of a school headmaster, who is in awe of a new pupil, the charismatic, Augustin Meaulnes. Adventurous and rebellious, Meaulnes leaves the school grounds one day and find himself on a strange estate which is preparing for a wedding feast. Here he becomes besotted with a beautiful girl and will then try to find the mysterious estate and idolised girl again. The book has a dream-like quality to it and I can see why it would have been popular in the 60s (when most people in my book club had apparently read it for the first time), but coming to it now and later in my life, I think it may have lost some of the magic. There was also a lot of discussion in our group around the differences in translations and the difficulty of translating the title of the book.

#110: I bought that one. I think my youngest has stolen it. I will have to investigate :)

How old is your youngest? If they are in their teens or early 20s then I think that is best time to read this book.

#112: She will be 20 in January.

119. Mr Rosenblum's List by Natasha Solomons
The blurb for this book is rather deceptive - it focuses on the list about how to behave like an Englishman that Jack Rosenblum adheres to in his quest to be accepted in English society, being a German Jew. The list features early on in the novel and these parts of the most lighthearted, but the story soon moves on when his obsession moves onto building a golf course in the Dorset countryside. Most of this part of book is lighthearted, but the other side of the story is his wife Sadie's experience. She does not want to forget her family and past life and the parts about her, are filled with sorrow that are sometimes jarring with the silliness of the goal course plot. I still enjoyed the book and actually at times preferred the parts about Sadie, which were genuinely moving, but it isn't the book I was expecting at all.

#114: I know I already have that one in the BlackHole. I must refresh my memory as to whether or not my local library actually has it.

I, too, loved Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. I knew Packer a little bit, as we used to live in the same San Francisco neighborhood and we frequented the same local watering hole. I knew her just before her collection was published. (I remember how happy she was when one of the stories was published in Harpers Magazine just before the collection was released.) At any rate, she was a cool, friendly person. I'm also looking forward to that next published work from her.

rocketjk - always good to hear that talented people are also nice people.

Just realised that I have now read more books so far this year than I did last year.

120. What was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
After quite a few steady but unspectacular fiction reads, I'm glad to report that I've read something that I loved. The book begins with Kate, a 10 year old who spends most of her time being a detective, looking out for suspicious behaviour in her street and at the shopping centre. Kate is funny and I found it easy to identify with how she as a lonely child occupies her time, as I think I was rather like this too. The relationship between her and her father was so touching (another case of me having to fight the urge to cry on the bus when reading it). The blurb on the back of the book makes it clear that Kate is going to disappear, and the switch to the second part of the book, set twenty years later, difficult to move onto, as the implications were sad and it was a shame to leave behind such a brilliant character. But I enjoyed this part too, with its observations about being stuck in soul-destroying jobs and relationships. Despite the tragedy of the events in the book, I didn't want it to end.

#118: Dodged a book bullet there as I already have that one in the BlackHole!

I have What Was Lost and Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (TIOI #1 this month) in the library pile.

nice review on What Was Lost. Adding it to my wishlist

121. The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn
I don't normally read two books in a row by the same author - I used to do this a lot but found I got tired of the author's style quickly. However, I wasn't that interested in the booK I originally planned to read and noticed that the library near work had Catherine O'Flynn's second book in stock, so I made an exception here. Other reviews don't rate this as highly as What was Lost but I enjoyed it just as much. The main character is Frank, a presenter on a local news programme, who has a cult following because of his bad jokes. His predecessor went onto national fame, but has recently died in a hit and run accident and the book slowly reveals the circumstances of his death. The other strand to the story is Frank's family life - his father was a celebrated architect, but detached father, and now the last few of his buildings are being torn down, and his mother has always suffered bouts of depression. To compensate for this saddness, Frank is a devoted husband and father. I love the way Catherine O'Flynn writes about parents and children - there is such humour and warmth in here and Frank's daughter Mo is a delight in the same was as Kate was in her other novel. I loved this book and I'm only regretting reading it so soon because now I don't have anymore of her books to read.

#122: I already have that one in the BlackHole. I am glad you enjoyed it as much as you enjoyed What Was Lost.

122. The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger
Another author from the New Yorkers 20 under 40 List. Not sure what to make of this one. The book is about a Chinese artist who comes to Los Angeles to put on an exhibition and at the same time, teach art in a girls school. He is staying with a family, who beneath the surface of their perfect lives, are in turmoil - the mother Cece once had an affair with her brother-in-law, Phil, who turns up unannounced around the same time as the artist. It was well-written, I read through it quite quickly and was absorbed by it, but I would still have reservations in recommending it as I didn't ever warm to anyone in the book and find the preoccupations of wealthy intellectual Americans a little dull at times. The other side of the story about artists in China, I found interesting, but I perhaps don't know enough about art (or China for that matter) to fully appreciate all of it.

#124: I think I will be skipping that one as I have no interest whatsoever in wealthy intellectual Americans.

I hope you enjoy your next read more!

#125> You'll want to give Henry James a miss, then, too! :)

#126: I have avoided Henry James this long, a little while longer will not hurt me, Jerry!

123. Angry Island Hunting the English by A A Gill
A A Gill is a journalist whose writing style I admire even if I don't always agree with his opinions (rather like Julie Burchill). Despite having spent most of his life in England, he was born iand spent the first year of his life in Scotland, so considers himself Scottish and an outsider in England, so this is a book about the national character of a people he lives amongst, but is keen to distance himself from. The central premise of the book is that the English are not by nature the polite reserved people we like to pretend we are, but that our manners are the only way we can control our constant rage. Even our achievements, he claims were carreid out in fits of pique rather than any higher motivations. There are chapters about accents, political correctness, architecture, sport portraits and the word "sorry". It is an amusing book which has some interesting information in it amongst the distain.

124. Rape A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates
A controversial title which I admit I was curious about but at the same time slightly wary of reading in public. Luckily, it is a short book, so I didn't have to hide its cover for long. It is about a mother who is gang raped one night while walking home from a party with her 12 year old daugher. The Love Story of the title isn't a romance, but refers to the friendship between the victims and the young police officer who is first on the scene. It is similar in style to her book Black Water which I really enjoyed. It is a bleak story with some harrowing parts (as you might expect) but another example of what a skilled writer Joyce Carol Oates is.

125. Push by Sapphire
I decided that the film Precious looked too depressing to watch, so why did I decided to pick up the book version at the library? Perhaps because it was a small book that would fit easily in my bag? The book I borrowed was called Precious like the film, but which is based on the book Push, which is the only one that seems to come up here. I have no idea what differences there are between the original and the film tie-in - it might just be the title. It is about 16 year old Precious, who is pregnant for the second time by her father. She can't read and her mother beats in her jealous rages over "stealing her man". This is bleak territory. The system has failed Precious but she is given the opportunity to go to an alternative school, where slowly she learns to read and write, and finds solace in both. But Precious' troubles aren't over and whilst I wanted to feel uplifted by the joy of her improved literacy, that wasn't going to dispell the absolute horrors described here.

126. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
Just what was needed after the darkness of the last two books. I was, as ever, a bit sceptical about this - would it live up to the praise heaped upon it? I thought it might be too twee for my tastes. Or would it just be a pale imitation of 84 Charing Cross Road? But no, I loved it. It was genuinely funny and touching - it made me smile a lot, but also, I found myself close to tears a couple of times too. I loved the wit of the main character, Juliet and the quirkiness of some of the islanders. I've read a few books recently with brilliant children characters in them, and this was another one.

#130: I loved that one too, Sandy. Glad you did as well.

127. A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
The book is narrated by Etsuko, a Japanese woman who married an Englishman and has been living in England for the past 20 or so years. A visit from her daughter triggers off memories of her past in Japan in the period just after the Second World War, in particular memories of her neighbour Sachiko and her young daughter Mariko and her former father-in-law. The book is beautifully written, but the narrator is unreliable and her memories at times vague, so the book ends without any great revelation or resolution. I found this a tiny bit disappointing - I enjoyed the journey, but would have liked something more of a destination from it. It felt very similar in style and theme to An Artist of the Floating World, but I preferred that novel - perhaps it is the difference between an author writing his first book and a later work. Not the best from Ishiguro is still a lot better than most authors and he is still firmly on my list of favourite writers.

#132: I have had that one in the BlackHole for a while now. I guess it can wait a while longer.

Alcottacre - I know you had recently read something by Ishiguro but I can't remember what. I would say this this would be my fourth favourite of his that I've read so far. My order so far would be:
Never Let Me Go
An Artist of the Floating World
Remains of the Day
A Pale View of the Hills
When We were Orphans

I have read Never Let Me Go and An Artist of the Floating World, but that is it for me on Ishiguro thus far. I am hoping to get to Remains of the Day before the year is out though. I own that one.

128. Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith
Another book in the Canongate Myths series - I read Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad last year. Angus is a celtic god of dreams, who is also associated with youth and beauty. The short book is made up of various tales, which feature Angus in some way - some about directly about Angus himself - his birth, his childhood and the woman who falls in love with, but others are stories where the the characters have dreams that touch their lives in some way. I hadn't heard of Angus before reading this and I wonder if I might have appreciated it more if I knew the original myths, in the same way I knew the story of Atwood's retelling.

129. Hawkes Harbor by S E Hinton
I loved The Outsiders and a couple of S E Hinton's other books when I was a teenager, but haven't read anything by her in years. This caught my eye in the library and I was interested to see how what her more recent work is like and whether I would like it as an adult. First of all, I wasn't sure if this was a YA book (as I think her older stuff was), but given some of the content, I would think not. This is one of the oddest books I've read in a long time, but not in a good way. It was a bizarre jumble of things with a story that moved around and sadly just seemed a mess. It started off promisingly with a young boy beng taken to an orphanage, then we meet the same character again 17 years later when he is being taken to a mental hospital. But then it moves off into stories about pirates before taking an even more bizarre turn - a twist which briefly crossed my mind when it was first hinted at, which I dismissed as nonsense, only for it turn out to be exactly what was going on. It isn't a complex book or difficult to read, but I was left wondering if perhaps there was some deeper meaning to it or some symbolism that I missed reading it at a superficial level.

#136: I already have that one in the BlackHole. I have never heard of Angus either, so maybe some research beforehand is warranted.

#137: I think I will give that one a pass. I hope you enjoy your next read more, Sandy!

I've only read The Outsiders...required in school as I'm sure it was for almost everyone. Based upon that review, I think I'll leave it at that. :-)

TadAD - The Outsiders wasn't required reading over here in the UK and I'm not sure it is even that well known here - I came to it via the film version.

130. Snow by Orhan Pamuk
My second month of a book club and again another choice that I didn't particularly enjoy. On the plus side, it is getting me to read things I wouldn't normally pick. Ka is a poet who is returning to Turkey after years in exile in Germany. He returns to the town of Kars, where several girls have recently committed suicide, one of whom had been amongst a group of girls expelled from the college for wearing headscarves. Ka finds himself in the middle of a conflict between the secular state and political Islamists. There was alot to take in here - for the first 150 pages or so, I didn't mind but then I found it hard to concentrate on it. One thing in particular I didn't like was the author inserting himself into the story as a character, which I found broke up the narrative in a frustrating way.

I'm so sorry that you didn't enjoy Snow that much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the satire and the presence of the snow throughout the book. I'm actually surprised that so many others, like yourself, found Snow a less than satisfying read. Different strokes, I guess...

Squeaky - I think part of the problem might have been that I felt under pressure to read it before the book club meeting as I only got a copy of it a few days before. If I had been able to read it at a more leisurely pace I might have enjoyed it more. I enjoyed the beginning and the ending, but there was a section in the middle where I lost interest.

131. No and Me by Delphine de Vigan
A YA book that I picked up without realising it wasn't an adult book, but really it didn't matter. It is about a bright 13 year old Lou, who meets a homeless teenager, called No, who she makes the subject of a school presentation. A friendship develops between the two girls. This was a lovely, but sad book and I particularly loved the character of Lou.

Hi, just stopping in to oogle all of the great books you've read thus far. Your amount of reading is very impressive. Good luck hitting 150, it looks as if that shouldn't be a problem.

I think No and Me has been brought out here in a YA edition and an adult one, not that I care. It's been chosen as one of the Richard and Judy titles, I bought it in a 2 for the price of 1 deal at WH Smith.

#144: I have seen a couple of good reviews of that one. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get it at my local library yet. Hopefully I will soon! Glad to see you enjoyed it.

132. St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
Another author from the New Yorkers 20 under 40 list and another great collection of short stories which restores my interest in the format. Most of the stories could broadly be described as magical realism as she has created worlds that mix the familiar with the strange. I enjoyed most of the stories, although the author’s tendency for stories to end suddenly was frustrating in some places. My favourites were "Out to Sea" about a retirement community living on boats who take part in a befriending scheme with juvenile delinquents and the title story, which is about the off-spring of werewolves who are being trained by nuns to forget their wolfish upbringing and live as the humans they are.

#148: I have had that one in the BlackHole forever. I really must get my hands on a copy.

148: I really loved that collection. She has a novel due out next spring.

133. Faux Amis by Ellie Malet Spradbery
I received this through Early Reviewers. I'm surprised that I won this as I don't really have anything similar in my library. It is a short and simple book, basically lists of vocabulary. The first section looks at the False Friends, words in French that sound like English words, but have a different meaning. The second section is French Expressions, where the English equilivent, rather than a direct translation is given and then letter in the book English expressions are given. Section 3 lists French words with a variety of different meanings. But then sections 4 and 5 seemed just like padding for the book - 4 is a series of lists of specific vocabulary for example types of trees, flowers and boats, which doesn't really seem to fit with the False Friends topic, and 5 is a Miscellaneous section for words that don't fit anywhere else. The book is probably very useful if you are seriously learning French, but I was expecting something with more explanation or stories about misuse rather than just lists of words.

134. The Slap by Christos Tsiokas
Another book club choice as well as a Booker Prize Longlist book. It was chosen for our book club because of the controversial topic - whether it is ever justified for an adult to slap someone else's child, which is the starting point of this book. Each of the eight chapters are told from a different character's point of view, beginning with Hector, the father of the household where the incident occurs, and then the story unfolds through different people who were all there on the day. The book is set in Australia, but most of the characters are of different ethnic origins and this plays just as important a part in the story as the issue of child discipline. The initial idea was interesting and I do like multiple-character perspective, but this was way too long. Also the characters were a truly horrible bunch of people which I suppose makes the issue more ambigious but this was too much - all of their thoughts were filled with hatred even for their family and supposed-friends. The only respite from this venom was in the sections about the two teenage characters, but at times these felt like an older person embarrassingly trying to be "down with the kids". The language, sex and drug taking was very explicit, which doesn't normally bother me, but I felt here it was used deliberately to shock rather than being realistic - or at least if this is realistic of the people that the author knows, I'm glad I don't know them.

#152: That one just does not appeal to me on any number of levels. No desire at all to read it.

I wouldn't have read it either if it hadn't been for my book club. I'm amazed it made it the Booker Longlist. So far, I've not really enjoyed any of my book club choices, but next year's planned list thankfully looks a bit more interesting.

I hope you have better luck with the book club next year then!

Hmm, I'm getting The Slap from the library today (Mike is picking it up for me). I'll have to get in the queue for Howard Jacobson at some point.

I think I will stay clear of The Slap. Yours is the second review that singles out the explicit stuff - and frankly I get enough of that on the news. BTW: good review :)

>>148 sanddancer: - I'm not much for the trend in "werewolf" fiction, and I've never been much of a fan of short stories, but your review and the title alone St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is just too much to pass up. I've added it to my wishlist. (I'll pass on The Slap though. Seems like it could have been an interesting premise, but doesn't sound like this one is for me.) Thanks for the reviews.

pdabeer - St Lucy's home for Girls Raised by Wolves is a world away from what I imagine the majority of werewolf fiction is like - I haven't actually read any myself. Definitely recommend the book, even if you just read that one story.

135. Little Face by Sophie Hannah
When I read The Other Half Lives I didn't realise that Sophie Hannah's books were a series, so I inadvertantly started at book 4. Little Face is the first one featuring the police of Spilling, but it doesn't really matter a huge amount that I'm reading them out of order as main part of the book (the crime part) is unaffected. Again, this had a really intriguing premise - a woman leaves her baby for the first time since giving birth and when she come home she is convinced that the baby in the cot is not her child. The story kept me gripped and I was speculating on all sorts of silly explanations, which thankfully turned out not to be the twists the author had created.

136. The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah
I try to avoid reading books by the same author one after another, but I was away, finished my book and found this in a charity shop. This one is about a woman who has a brief liaison with a man while staying at a hotel and then a year later, hears his name on the news when his wife and daughter have been found dead, but the grieving husband on the television is not the man she met. The story moves between her perspective and those of the police (familiar from Hannah's other books), as well as diary entries supposedly left by the dead woman. The diary entries are tirades about how much she hates motherhood and are taken as evidence that the mother killed her daughter, then herself, but all is not as it first seems. I enjoyed this one even more than Little Face, and I will definitely read the one other book in this loosely connected series that I haven't read yet, although not a immediately as I have some library books that need to be read.

The last werewolf book I read was Sparkle Hayter's Naked Brunch some time ago, though actually I've read 3 Sookies as well. St Lucy's home is nothing like that and it's highly recommended.

137. Ipod Therefore I am by Dylan Jones
Jones charts his recent obsession with the iPod and his life-long obsession with music. He moves through his interest in music in a pretty much chronlogical order, adding in chapters about Apple. I really enjoyed the early parts of the book, both about his music tastes and surprisingly the stuff about Apple's origins and innovations. The later chapters, where several in a row were just about his opinions on music and his obsessive compiling of playlists and adding music to the iPod were less successful - particularly a chapter about uploading formats, which started off as being about a trip to Ibiza and I never quite understood the relationship between the two. There are some nice little anecdotes in here (many in the footnotes) as Dylan has been a lifestyle journalist so has met a lot of famous people and heard a lot of good stories about them. The book ends with appendices of some of his playlists, which were interesting, although apart from the sheer quantity of his music, I didn't feel particularly inspired by his tastes. Overall his writing lacked the emotional quality of Nick Hornby's 31 Songs or Rob Sheffield's Love is Mix Tape.

oops, and i thought that a 1010 challenge was already a fine job, but this is simply amazing, already 137 books in less then one year..... i haven't reached the 37 mark yet ... and here you are with more then hundred books in surplus ... wow.

I read Ipod Therefore I Am a few years ago and was also a bit disappointed in it. I must read 31 Songs - I have it and I even know where it is!

138. Then We Came to An End by Joshua Ferris
Another one from the New Yorker list. At first I thought I was going to hate this book. Why? The first person plural - I think that is the right term anyway - by which I mean rather than the third person or the regular first person use of "I", this book is written from the perspective of "we". I find this hard to get to grips with - I want to know exactly who is speaking and this devise stops that from ever being reveal. But actually it is appropriate here in a book about the workplace and the collective mentality of employees. It is set in a Chicago advertising agency in 2001, where a first wave of redundancies has started and everyone is fearing for their job. The concept at first doesn't seem too promising - who after a dull day at work, wants to spend time in a fictional office? It feels like gatecrashing someone else's office drinks, which is always dull for an outsider as everything revolves around in-jokes and people's behaviour in relation to existing perceptions of them. But what starts of seeming incredibly mundane comes to life as gradually individual personalities shine through the collective voice. And for all the detail about meeting procedures, redundancy, gossip and office etiquette etc, quite a lot does actually happen here - this is a workplace affected by cancer and the murder of a child, depression and threats of violence, as well as the usual rumour of office romance. In the end, I did quite enjoy it, although I would question the reviews that describe it as funny.

#167: I started that one, but just could not finish it. I am glad you enjoyed it more than I did, Sandy.

139. Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt
Winston Churchill famously described the depression that hung over his whole life as a "black dog". Set in the 1960s, as Churchill prepares to step down from Parliament, the black dog is shown here as a real creature that menaces and annoys Churchill. The dog, variously calling himself Mr Chartwell or Black Pat, also turns up at the door of Esther, responding to her ad for a lodger. This is hugely imaginative book, and the character of Mr Chartwell is truly original, mixing the groteseque with some comic real dog-like behaviour. It is also a very touching portrayal of how depression affects people, but luckily has enough humour and optimism to lift the story.

#169: I will have to look for that one. Thanks for the recommendation.

I think it is only fairly recently out in hardback here so might be a bit difficult to get hold of now, but worth adding to your "black hole".

Yeah, I looked for it both at my local libraries and for the Nook and saw that it is only available in hardback right now. I will probably be waiting a while for that one. Luckily, I have plently to keep me occupied in the meantime!

140. Room by Emma Donaghue
Another great read. This one made it to the Booker Shortlist and thoroughly deserved it in my opinion. The narrator is Jack, a five year old boy whose whole world is the small room he lives in with his mother. Although he has a limited world, he is happy enough, has a close relationship with his mother and has friends like Dora on the television. Gradually, the reason for their circumstances are revealed and then the book moves up a notch as they try to escape. Sometimes trying to narrator entirely through the eyes of a child doesn't work, either becoming irritating or limiting with the author falling back on hindsight, but here it is sustained and works brilliantly. A disturbing story, but the love in it between the mother and boy is strong that it shines through the bleak setting.

#173: I just read that one this week too. I thought it was terrific. I am glad you liked it.

141. Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes
It took a couple of chapters for me to get into this one, but once I did it was just as quirky and amusing as Dan Rhodes' other stories. Set in a Germany, the story centres on the strange goings on at a museum about suicide. There are a host of weird characters including the ghoulish old man who works at the museum, a seemingly respectable doctor with a dark secret and a man who looks just like Pavarotti. Woven around the main story about the museum is a sweet little love story about children from a village in Portugal. The book is frequently grotesque, but I like his dark sense of humour so found it a lot of fun.

#175: I will have to look for that one. Sadly, my local library does not have any of Rhodes' books.

Little Hands Clapping has me intrigued so I'll add it to wishlist and keep an eye open for it.

Dan Rhodes is quite popular here but perhaps his humour is considered so British that he isn't widely available elsewhere.

142 C by Tom McCarthy
I really don't know how to review this. Again, it is a Booker Prize shortlist book and it has been praised for its inventiveness. It follows the life of Serge Carrefax, a life that includes time at a sanitorium, going to war, attending seances and spying. I thought it was going to be more experimental than it was, but even so it was too disjointed for me to be fully absorbed by it. Communications, radio waves and such like play an important part, but I think at times their significance and symbolism was lost on me. I didn't hate it by any means and there were the odd phrases, scenes or character that were great, but it didn't quite add up to a whole for me.

#179: I think I am going to pass on that one.

I've been struggling again, stopping and starting with some books and distracting myself with photography books with very little texts which it would seem like cheating to count here.

143. The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis
December's Book Club choice - yet again another one I wouldn't have read otherwise and didn't particularly enjoy. It takes the form of a series of letters from Screwtape, a high ranking official in Hell, to his young inexperienced nephew, a novice tempter, whose job it is make sure his assigned human strays from the path of Christian righteousness. It was an interesting premise which I initially found amusing as what we consider good, they saw as bad, but as the book progressed it became darker and more menacing. This was all very skillfully written, but what I had a problem with is Lewis' dogmatic approach to religion. His idea of how a good Christian should behave seems so narrow that most people would fail. There is quite a bit for discussion here but the next book club meeting is our Christmas one, so it is taking place in a restaurant and I'm not sure that heated religious debates will be appropriate.

#181: I am sorry you seem to be in a book funk right now! I hope it goes away soon.

Thanks - my slump seems to be over now with two good reads in as many days.

144. Ten Sorry Tales by Mick Jackson
A collection of ten quirky short stories, united by an unreal fairy-tale like quality. They range from the grotesque, to the funny to the wistful. Each story begins with a brilliant illustration by David Roberts, whose odd drawings are perfectly matched to the tales. I'm not sure who this book is aimed at - I found it in the adult fiction section of the library, but other reviews describe it as for young adults or even children - it probably doesn't matter too much as each age group can appreciate it.

145. Ask the Dust by John Fante
I read Wait Until Spring, Bandini at the end of last year which deals with the early life of Fante's alter ego Arturo Bandinin. This book was actually the first one he wrote, but covers a later period in Bandini's life, namely his early years living in LA, struggling to make a living as a writer. It follows the ups and downs of his fortunes, in particular his destructive relationship with a Mexican waitress, Camilla. His writing is so simple, but so effective. My copy had an introduction by Charles Bukowski talking about how much of any influence this had on him and it is very obvious from this.

Glad the slump is gone!

146. Estates by Lydsey Hanley
Very interesting book that mixes social history with the personal experience of the author on the subject of the UK's council housing estates. The author grew up on an estate on the edge of Birmingham and then as an adult lived on an estate in inner London, so knows all too well the difficulties faced by residents of these areas. The book looks at the history of council houses, from the slum clearances, the building of estates, then towerblock, and Thatcher's selling off the stock with "Right to Buy". The historical parts, although fairly familiar to me, were interesting and I was particularly interested in the parts about Modernist architecture, a style I have a soft-spot for in terms of public buildings (my uni was a notable example), but is so wrong for homes. However, where the book really came alive was the part about her childhood, how she always felt different from other in her estate school, and how her horizons were broadened doing her A levels at a college with a mixture of social classes - this made me think about the tragedy of so many children being written off so young. The author also raised the thought-provoking point about why has state-provided housing become so stigmatised, whilst we don't feel the same about state schools or healthcare.

On the whole, I agree with her opinions, although her comments about large families waiting for houses rankled me a bit as whilst I agree there shouldn't be such shame in council housing, I do believe that since the housing shortage in the South is well-known that there needs to be some personal responsibility. Also she doesn't have any real solutions to the genuine problem families that exist on these estates and glosses over this. The optimistic note the book ends on, having been written a couple of years ago, now seems naive given the current Government.

Estates is a book I really want to read, I must track down my copy at some point. An optimistic conclusion might have been naive even at the date of publication. Hanley was on the radio at some point this week, I can't remember the name of the programme but it might be worth searching the BBC website for Radio 4 and Listen Again.

I picked up a copy at one of those discount book shops - Book Warehouse, I think, for about £4.

I found a bargain copy for £2, there's a surprisingly good bargain bookshop on Euston Road opposite the British Library and near the Euston Flyer pub. I've just looked to see when I bought it and it was June this year, so that means I might actually be able to find it (books bought between when I ran out of shelf space years ago, mostly, and the end of last year are the hardest to find, and the likeliest to be in the shed.

147. The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Absolutely brilliant - so much here that I loved. The book is written from the point of view of Nathan Glass, an ex-insurance saleman, recovering from cancer and recently divorced with a bad relationship with his daughter. He moves back to Brooklyn, where he was born, with the intention of dying there, having all but given up on life. He occupies his time working on a book of Human Follies, a collection of mishaps he has witnessed in his life, then he bumps into his nephew Tom, with whom he had lost touch, and whose only life is in a slump, and this encounter leds to a series of events that gives new purpose to both their lives.

Less tricksy post-modern than some of Auster's other books, it nonetheless still has a rich tapestry of tangents, literary allusions and classic cinema references that are a feature of his work. Like the other books of his that I have really loved, the humanity really shines through here from a cast of unusual, but always believable characters.

#189: I already have that one in the BlackHole. I obviously need to bump it up some! Maybe after my current book fast is over . . .

148. Drive-By Saviours by Chris Benjamin
A longer review than normal as this was an Early Reviewer book. The book begins on a small Indonesian island with the birth of Bumi, a boy who seems to be remarkably intelligent from an early age, learning to speak very quickly and as a small child suggesting ways for the local fishermen to improve their techniques. His childhood is tough, with him first at the mercy of his violent father, then sent away to school as part of a Government education programme. Alternating with these chapters, are chapters from the point of view of Mark, a failed social worker in Toronto, who is bored with his work and falling out of love with his girlfriend. Although worlds apart, fortunes will conspire to bring these two characters together and inevitably this will have a profound effect on both their lives.

I enjoyed the early chapters about Bumi's life, which at first almost seemed to have a magical realism quality, but then turned much darker, mixing the political history of the country with Bumi's story. And although less interesting, I didn't mind the parts about Mark's life, but for me, the book actually went downhill when the two characters came together. In these parts, we lost the narrative about Bumi and the whole thing was told from Mark's point of view, whereupon he became deeply irritating,

At times the book feels like the author has a lot of social injustice issues that they want to discuss and they are all piled into the book, so that the plot feels like just an excuse to discuss these issues. Also, a key point of the plot hinges on an illness (I won't say what here) and we are expected to believe that Mark, an educated man who works with healthcare professionals, has never heard of it. All in all, quite interesting, but ultimately disappointing.

#191: Too bad about that one! I hope your next read is a better one for you.

149. The Island at the End of the World by Sam Taylor
A father and his three children are living on an island, apparently the only survivors of a great flood. The narrative moves between the religious zealot father, the young son and the teenage daughter, who is beginning to question her father's version of the world. The parts written by the young boy were quite hard to read as they were written as if he was speaking them with some words confused. There was an effective atmosphere of suspense and danger, and I liked the way it moved back and forth so you saw the same events from different viewpoints, but overall it just seemed too far-fetched.

I've hardly done any reading this last week - I've been too tired most days to even read on my journey to work, but I should still make the 150 target.

Hello Sanddancer,
i can't imagine that you would NOT read a book in four weeks ;-)
of course you will make it to your target, your impressive target i must say.
Take a good nights sleep and ... you'll be there
good luck
Lunar18

As predicted by Lunar, I have indeed made my target.

150. A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah
Another thriller with an interesting premise and like Little Face one that centres on motherhood. A woman is murdered who had become famous for being jailed for killing her young children, then had the conviction overturned, on the grounds of flawed medical evidence. A respected documentary maker had been making a film about her and other similar cases, but suddenly dros the project, handing responsiblity over to his junior Fliss. Fliss receives an anonymous note containing a grid of 16 numbers, a strange puzzle she worries is from the killer. The plot had me immediately hooked and as with her other books, I found it a compulsive but easy read. However (and this is often a problem I have with all crime books, not just this author), I found the resolution a bit disappointing and not as fascinating as I thought it would be.

Congratulations on hitting 150 for the year!

Congratulations ! What will you do with the time left in 2010 :-)

Read more books, surely.

I own The Brooklyn Follies now I need to find and read it.

I've wavered on The Island at the End of the World. Sounds like it might be worth skipping.

Thank you all for the congratulations. Into bonus books now.

151. In Your Face by Scarlett Thomas
The second in her Lily Pascale detective series, which she wrote before moving onto her meta-fiction stuff. Rather like the Sophie Hannah book, it was very readable and I was gripped, but it isn't a great work of literature by any means. There were a few alusions to other books here, but the literary references weren't as prominent as in the first in this series Dead Clever. Although I enjoyed reading it, I do find myself a little bit irked by her lead character or in fact all of her lead characters who seem like fictional alter egos, which is fine, except she has an awfully high opinion of her self, her "genius" and how irristable men find her.

Hello Sanddancer,
How fast do you read, another book of 250+ pages in less then a day ... Amazing.
Lunar18

152. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Another author from the New Yorker's 20 under 40 list, to which I'm incredibly grateful, as otherwise I doubt I would have picked up a book with such a sentimental sounding title.

Leo Gurksky escaped from Poland during the Holocaust, when everyone who knew him assumed he had died. He goes to New York, where the one woman he ever loved went a few years before him, but finds she is already married and he has a son he didn't know about and who knows nothing of him. He lives a lonely life, fearing that when he dies his body won't be found for dies, so creates small commotions wherever he goes to get noticed. Interwoven with this story, is the story of a teenage girl called Alma, who was named after the female characters in a book called "The History of Love". Her father died years ago and her mother is still in deep grief.

It is a book infused with sadness, but also love. It is wonderfully written with both the main characters being delightful. There are several writers in the story and quite a few literary references, and at one point, I thought I might be a bit confused by it all, but it turned out I wasn't and pretty much all was explained.

A really beautiful book, which I'm so glad I read.

#202: I have that one on my radar already. I need to get it read! Thanks for the reminder.

I adored Leo's voice. I definitely want to read The History of Love again sometime. I really liked Gold, so I'll have to try another one of Rhodes's books. I've got an Auster to read come the first of the year, as well. I lost you in October. I'm looking forward to following you more closely next year.

Alcottacre - you should bump it up your list - I think you'd like it.

Bonnie - I loved him too - I thought his schemes to get noticed were particularly sweet. It actually reminded me of some of Auster's books in its literature references and being about writers.

#205: Duly noted!

153. Just My Type by Simon Garfield
Someone at work referred to me as "Font Nazi" which apparently wasn't necessarily an insult, and its true, I do tend to have a strong opinion on the use of various typefaces. I'm not such an expert as the author of this book or the people in it, but the very fact that I chose to read it at all probably does indicate a level of geekiness. Suffice to say, I found this book fascinating. Chapters look at fonts in relation to different subjects, such as music, politics or transport, or looks at issues including piracy, who to design a font and the world's worst fonts. Interspersed with the main chapters, are shorter sections called "Font Breaks" which focus on an individaul font, its history and usage. The book itself is beautifully designed, with the title written in some unusual fonts, a font periodic table on the inside cover, lots of illustrations and text written in the font being discussed. If I had to pick fault with the book, I would have liked a little more about the DIY fonts the 60s and punk movement, but overall, I found it very informative and surprisingly fun read.

#207: Oh, I am nerdy enough to love that one too!

154. The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
I did not enjoy this one at all - I only persisted with it because I have given up on quite a few books recently and having got 70 pages in, I thought I should see it through. First of all I hated the writing style - some reviews have praised it, but for me, it was too much and rather than beautiful and poetic, came across as stilted and pretentious. Although that may have been fitting as the characters in the book are all stilted and pretentious too. The book is primarily about a Tom, an Australian of Indian descent and his obsession with the "mysterious" artist Nelly. As well as obsessing over this woman with a mysterious past (which is quite interesting, although the idea itself has been done to death), he loses his dog in the Bush. The dog is best off out of it away from these ghastly people. Tom is a Literature professor, specialising in Henry James, so there is a lot of stuff about James and presumably something in the narrative and style is a clever reference to his writing, but it seemed forced - so different from The History of Love and Brooklyn Follies which both weave in literary references that actually make me want to read the authors they mention, whereas this, again, seemed, stilted and pretentious.

#209: It looks like I can safely skip that one!

The 2011 group is up and running. Are you going to join us again next year? I hope you do!

Oh yes, I'll be in for next year, although I'm actually hoping to read less next year because I would like to no longer have the long commute.

I hope your commute time cuts down for you then! Glad to know you will be back.

How long is your commute?

Not very far geographically, but 15 minutes on one bus and then around an hour on another bus.

Hello,
there is an article in the weekly litterature addendum of my newspaper on Nicole Krauss, due to her new book Great House. The article is in dutch, but if you like i can send it to you, with or without translation, the latter option will take some more time ;-) Seems an interesting author so i will have a look for her books in my favorite bookshops.
Lunar18

Lunar - thanks for the offer, but I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble. Perhaps you can just tell me any interesting points from it? I definitely recommend The History of Love and I'm going look out for her other work.

155. Shopping Seduction & Mr Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead
This is a biography of Harry Gordon Selfridge and his famous London department store. Selfridge was an American, who started his career at Marshall Field's in Chicago, "retired" at 40, then moved to London to start his own department store. He has grand plans and some of his idea revolutionised shopping - he invented the bargain basement and the whole shopping experience with art and entertainment that Selfridges does so well today, was started by him. There is a lot of interesting information in here about society in the early part of the last century, obviously about shopping habits, but also about women's place in society and the changing class system. Selfridge led a glamorous life and there is as much about his various lady friends as there is about shopping, and whilst it offers an interesting insight into the lifestyles of the rich and famous of that period, by the end of the book, I still don't feel that I know Selfridge himself that well.

Hello,
just to keep my knowledge of english to an acceptable level i made a translation, without any pretention of being correct, of the interview with Nicole Krauss. I'll leave a comment on your profile page with my e-mail address, answer to that and i will send you the text.
For the record, i did the translation with the help of Google translations for some words in one hour and 20 minutes. Not bad, i like to think for myself ;-)

156. The Complaints by Ian Rankin
Another post-Rebus book, which I liked a bit more than Doors Open, although still not as much as Rebus stories. It is about Malcolm Fox, who works in the internal complaints department of Edinburgh's police force and is asked to investigate a policeman whose details have been found on a paedophile website under investigation. Then his sister's boyfriend is murdered and Fox becomes suspicious that he is being set up. I enjoyed the unravelling of the mystery, but had hoped the book would have been more about the internal investigations department whereas this did ultimately end up like a fairly standard police story.

My last book of 2010

157. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
I'd mean intending to read this for ages and finally got around to it. I really enjoyed the first few chapters, but then found my interest starting to wane after around 100 pages. I finished it and found the latter part a bit more interesting, but it didn't ever quite live up to my expectations.